Internet delivery of digital content to IPTVs continues to increase, as does the popularity of IPTVs themselves. Digital content is in many cases provided by service providers or just “services”. However, services sometimes change over time, as does a user's access to them. For example, services may be combined or change names, and a user's subscription to such services may lapse or change in its access to various assets. Where services are no longer available for a content playback device, the assets of the service are improper to display.
The availability of assets changes even more than that of services. One reason is that it is normal for services to change their assets over time, or to change the way in which assets are organized, e.g., categorized. One feature users may typically access is a list of favorites or a list of recently-viewed assets. If a user accesses such a list, and the list contains assets that are outdated, erroneous, or point to a broken link, the user inconveniently receives an error message relating to the same, which are termed here as “bad” assets.